Goodwin, Michael, and others, "The Dziga Vertov Group in
America," in
Take One
(Montreal), March/April 1971.

MacBean, James, "Godard and the Dziga Vertov Group: Film and
Dialectic," in
Film Quarterly
(Berkeley), Fall 1972. Kolkeon, R.P., "Angle and Reality: Godard
and Gorin in America," in
Sight and Sound
(London), Summer 1973.

"Director of the Year,"
International Film Guide
(London, New York), 1974.

Rayns, Tony, "The Godard Film Forum," in
Film
(London), January 1974.

MacCabe, Colin, "Realism and the Cinema: Notes on Some Brechtian
Theses," in
Screen
(London), Summer 1974.

If influence on the development of world cinema is the criterion, then
Jean-Luc Godard is certainly the most important filmmaker of the past
thirty years; he is also one of the most problematic.

Godard's career so far falls roughly into three periods: the early
works from
About de souffle
to
Weekend
(1959–1968), a period whose end is marked decisively by the latter
film's final caption, "Fin de Cinéma"; the
period of intense politicization, during which Godard collaborated (mainly
though not exclusively) with Jean-Pierre Gorin and the Dziga Vertov group
(1968–1972); and the subsequent work, divided between attempts to
renew communication with a wider, more "mainstream" cinema
audience and explorations of the potentialities of video (in collaboration
with Anne-Marie
Miéville). One might also separate the films from
Masculin-Féminin
to
Weekend
as representing a transitional phase from the first to the Dziga Vertov
period, although in a sense all Godard's work is transitional. What
marks the middle period off from its neighbours is above all the
difference in intended audience: the Dziga Vertov films were never meant
to reach the general public. They were instead aimed at already committed
Marxist or leftist groups, campus student groups, and so on, to stimulate
discussion of revolutionary politics and aesthetics, and, crucially, the
relationship between the two.

Godard's importance lies in his development of an authentic
modernist cinema in opposition to (though, during the early period, at the
same time
within
) mainstream cinema; it is with his work that film becomes central to our
century's major aesthetic debate, the controversy developed through
such figures as Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno as to whether
realism or modernism is the more progressive form. As ex-
Cahiers du Cinéma
critic and New Wave filmmaker, Godard was initially linked with Truffaut
and Chabrol in a kind of revolutionary triumvirate; it is easy, in
retrospect, to see that Godard was from the start the truly radical
figure, the "revolution" of his colleagues operating purely
on the aesthetic level and easily assimilable into the mainstream.

A simple way of demonstrating the essential thrust of Godard's work
is to juxtapose his first feature,
Breathless
, with the excellent American remake. Jim McBride's film follows
the original fairly closely, with the fundamental difference that in it
all other elements are subordinated to the narrative and the characters.
In Godard's film, on the contrary, this traditional relationship
between signifier and signified shows a continuous tendency to come
adrift, so that the
process of narration
(which mainstream cinema strives everywhere to conceal) becomes
foregrounded;
A bout de souffle
is "about" a story and characters, certainly, but it is
also about the cinema, about film techniques, about Jean Seberg, etc.

This foregrounding of the process—and the means—of narration
is developed much further in subsequent films, in which Godard
systematically breaks down the traditional barrier between
fiction/documentary, actor/character, narrative film/experimental film to
create freer, "open" forms. Persons appear as themselves in
works of fiction, actors address the camera/audience in monologues or as
if being interviewed, materiality of film is made explicit (the switches
from positive to negative in
Une Femme mariée
, the turning on and off of the soundtrack in
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle
, the showing of the clapper-board in
La Chinoise
). The initial motivation for this seems to have been the assertion of
personal freedom: the filmmaker shatters the bonds of traditional realism
in order to be able to say and do whatever he wants, creating films
spontaneously. (
Pierrot le fou
—significantly, one of Godard's most popular films—is
the most extreme expression of this impulse.) Gradually, however, a
political motivation (connected especially with the influence of Brecht)
takes over. There is a marked sociological interest in the early films
(especially
Vivre sa vie
and
Une Femme mariée
), but the turning-point is
Masculin-féminin
with its two male protagonists, one seeking fulfillment through personal
relations, the other a political activist. The former's suicide at
the end of the film can be read as marking a decisive choice: from here
on, Godard increasingly listens to the voice of revolutionary politics and
eventually (in the Dziga Vertov films) adopts it as his own voice.

The films of the Dziga Vertov group (named after the great Russian
documentarist who anticipated their work in making films that foreground
the means of production and are continuously self-reflexive) were the
direct consequence of the events of May 1968. More than ever before the
films are directly concerned with their own process, so that the
ostensible subjects—the political scene in Czechoslovakia (
Pravda
) or Italy (
Lotte in Italia
), the trial of the Chicago Eight (
Vladimir and Rosa
)—become secondary to the urgent, actual subject: how does one make
a revolutionary film? It was at this time that Godard distinguished
between making political films (i.e., films on political subjects:
Costa-Gavras's
Z
is a typical example) and making films politically, the basic assumption
being that one cannot put radical content into traditional form without
seriously compromising, perhaps negating, it. Hence the attack on realism
initiated at the outset of Godard's career manifests its full
political significance: realism is a bourgeois art form, the means whereby
the bourgeoisie endlessly reassures itself, validating its own ideology as
"true," "natural," "real"; its
power must be destroyed. Of the films from this period,
Vent d'est
(the occasion for Peter Wollen's seminal essay on
"Counter-Cinema" in
After Image
) most fully realized this aesthetic: the original pretext (the pastiche
of a Western) recedes into the background, and the film becomes a
discussion about itself—about the relationship between sound and
image, the materiality of film, the destruction of bourgeois forms, the
necessity for continuous self-criticism and self-awareness.

The assumption behind the Dziga Vertov films is clearly that the
revolutionary impetus of May 1968 would be sustained, and it has not been
easy for Godard to adjust to its collapse. That difficulty is the subject
of one of his finest works,
Tout va bien
(again in collaboration with Gorin), an attempt to return to commercial
filmmaking without abandoning the principles (both aesthetic and
political) of the preceding years. Beginning by foregrounding
Godard's own problem (how does a radical make a film within the
capitalist production system?), the film is strongest in its complex use
of Yves Montand and Jane Fonda (simultaneously fictional
characters/personalities/star images) and its exploration of the issues to
which they are central. These issues include the relationship of
intellectuals to the class struggle; the relationship between professional
work, personal commitment, and political position; and the problem of
sustaining a radical impulse in a non-revolutionary age.
Tout va bien
is Godard's most authentically Brechtian film, achieving radical
force and analytical clarity without sacrificing pleasure and a degree of
emotional involvement.

Godard's relationship to Brecht has not always been so clear-cut.
While the justification for Brecht's distanciation principles was
always the communication of clarity, Godard's films often leave the
spectator in a state of confusion and frustration. He continues to seem by
temperament more anarchist than Marxist. One is troubled by the continuity
between the criminal drop-outs of the earlier films and the political
activists of the later. The insistent intellectualism of the films is
often offset by a wilful abeyance of systematic thinking, the abeyance,
precisely, of that self-awareness and self-criticism the political works
advocate. Even in
Tout va bien
, what emerges from the political analysis as the film's own
position is an irresponsible and ultimately desperate belief in
spontaneity. Desperation, indeed, is never far from the Godardian surface,
and seems closely related to the treatment of heterosexual relations: even
through the apparent feminist awareness of the recent work runs a strain
of unwitting misogyny (most evident, perhaps, in
Sauve qui peut
). The central task of Godard criticism, in fact, is to sort out the
remarkable and salutary nature of the positive achievement from the
temperamental limitations that flaw it.

From 1980 on, Godard commenced the second phase of his directorial career.
Unfortunately, far too many of his films have become increasingly
inaccessible to the audiences who had championed him in his heyday during
the 1960s.
Sauve qui peut (La Vie) (Every Man for Himself)
, Godard's comeback film, portended his future work. It is an
awkward account of three characters whose lives become entwined: a man who
has left his wife for a woman; the woman, who is in the process of leaving
the man for a rural life; and a country girl who has become a prostitute.
In fact, several of Godard's works might best be described as
anti-movies.
Passion
, for example, features characters named Isabelle, Michel, Hanna, Laszlo
and Jerzy (played respectively by Isabelle Huppert, Michel Piccoli, Hanna
Schygulla, Laszlo Szabo, and Jerzy Radziwilowicz), who are involved in the
shooting of a movie titled
Passion.
The latter appears to be not so much a structured narrative as a series
of scenes which are visions of a Renaissance painting. The film serves as
a cynical condemnation of the business of moviemaking-for-profit, as the
extras are poorly treated and the art of cinema is stained by commercial
considerations.

Prenom: Carmen (First Name: Carmen)
is Godard's best latter-career effort, a delightfully subversive
though no less pessimistic mirror of the filmmaker's disenchantment
with the cinema. His Carmen is a character straight out of his earlier
work: a combination seductress/terrorist/wannabe movie maker. Her uncle,
played by Godard, is a once-celebrated but now weary and faded film
director named, not surprisingly, Jean-Luc Godard.

It seemed that Godard had simply set out to shock in
Hail, Mary
, a redo of the birth of Christ set in contemporary France. His Mary is a
young student and gas station attendant; even though she has never had sex
with Joseph, her taxi-driving boyfriend, she discovers she is pregnant.
Along with Scorsese's
The Last Temptation of Christ
, this became a cause celebre among Catholics and even was censured by the
Pope. However, the film is eminently forgettable; far superior is
The Book of Mary
, a perceptive short about a girl and her constantly quarrelling parents.
It accompanied showings of
Hail, Mary
, and is directed by long-time Godard colleague Anne-Marie
Miéville.

Detective
, dedicated to auteur heroes John Cassavetes, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Clint
Eastwood, is a verbose, muddled film noir. Despite its title,
Nouvelle Vague (New Wave)
, an observance of the lives of a wealthy and influential couple, only
makes one yearn for the days of the real "Nouvelle Vague."
The narrative, which focuses on the sexual and political issues that are
constants in Godard's films, is barely discernable; the
dialogue—including such lines as "Love doesn't die,
it leaves you," "One man isn't enough for a
woman—or too much," "A critic is a soldier who fires
at his own regiment," "Have you ever been stung by a dead
bee?"—is superficially profound.
King Lear
, an excessive, grotesque updating of Shakespeare, is of note for its
oddball, once-in-a-lifetime cast: Godard; Woody Allen; Norman and Kate
Mailer; stage director Peter Sellars; Burgess Meredith; and Molly
Ringwald. The political thriller
Allemagne Neuf Zero (Germany Nine Zero)
, although as confusing as any latter-day Godard film, works as nostalgia
because of the presence of Eddie Constantine. He is recast as private eye
Lemmy Caution, who last appeared in
Alphaville.
Here, he encounters various characters in a reunified Germany.

Helas Pour Moi (Oh, Woe Is Me)
, based on the Greek legend of Alcmene and Amphitryon and a text penned by
the Italian poet Leopardi, is a long-winded bore about a God who wants to
perceive human feeling; those intrigued by the subject matter would be
advised to see Wim Wenders'
Wings of Desire
and
Faraway, So Close. JLG/JLG—Autoportrait de Decembre
(JLG/JLG—Self-Portrait in December)
, filmed in and near Godard's Swiss home, is a semi-abstract
biography of the filmmaker. Its structure is appropriate, given the
development of Godard's cinematic style. Ultimately, it is of
interest mostly to those still concerned with Godard's life and
career.

—Robin Wood, updated by Rob Edelman

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